German policeman beats Turkish man in airport

DUISBURG - Doğan News Agency

An argument erupted on Aug. 10 when an airport employee didn’t pay attention to Yaşar Albayrak’s information request concerning their flight. DHA photo

German police has beaten a Turkish citizen in Cologne-Bonn Airport after a spat erupted between him and an airport employee. Yaşar Albayrak, 51, was wounded from his head and one arm after a German policeman hit him with a baton from his head. Albayrak’s right eye has also become purple.

Albayrak, who lives in Germany’s Duisburg province, said that they went to the airport with his wife Elmas Albayrak, 44, to send his son Ediz Albayrak, 24, and his fiancée Dilara Doğan off to İstanbul.

An argument erupted on Aug. 10 when an airport employee didn’t pay attention to Yaşar Albayrak’s information request concerning their flight, according to the family who comes from Turkey’s northern province of Trabzon.

“The employee didn’t pay attention to us. I said ‘Why aren’t you helping us?’ and a short dispute erupted between us. Then we went to take information from another employee. At that time we saw policemen came beside the one with whom I argued. After talking with her for a while, they came and asked my son for his identity. At the same time they were trying to take him by holding his arm. Before I even could say ‘It wasn’t my son, it was me who argued with the lady,’ they started to pull me too. While I was saying ‘What are you doing?’ I suddenly saw the police hitting me with a baton. I don’t remember the rest. I have fainted,” Albayrak told about the incident.

The Turkish man had a 3,5 centimeters wide injury in his head when he was taken to hospital where he was released after being treated.

Albayrak reacted to the incident by saying: “We have got beaten in the airport, what kind of a democracy is this? I am an employer in this country and I give lots of tax. I will demand justice with legal ways.”

Turkey asks Berlin to penalize violence

Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdağ has urged German authorities to implement legal sanctions against police who has beaten a Turkish citizen in an airport; otherwise, the German government itself would be violating the law.

“I condemn the police violence practiced at the Cologne Airport against our citizens. We will be closely following what the German authorities will do on this issue,” Bozdağ said in a written statement released on Aug. 12.

According to a report by Anadolu Agency, the deputy prime minister has already ordered both the Turkish Embassy in Berlin and the Presidency for Turks Abroad and Related Communities, a body working under the prime ministry, to closely follow the issue

“We hope that German authorities will apply legal penalties against the policemen who violated the law. If not this will be violation of law by the government,” Bozdağ also stressed from his Twitter account after the event.